drawing a crowd

Cool new Houston Art Fair draws up more than 40 rising stars for 3-day market

With its myriad world class museums and art organizations, Houston is known globally as a city for visual arts, and our wealth of stellar galleries also makes H-town a prime art market for collectors.

But in post-pandemic times, we have lost a few of our popular — and just generally fun — collecting opportunities. Those big art events that brought art-lovers across the city together to see, be seen, and nab that perfect piece, are few and far between.

But now, art fans can rejoice, as the new — and entirely homegrown — Houston Art Fair makes its art mark on the city. Presented at Reeves Art + Design from Friday, January 26 through Sunday, January 28, the Houston Art Fair will showcase 40 up-and-coming contemporary artists bringing their best and latest work directly to collectors.

Canvassing artists

The fair weekend will be free and open to the public on January 27 and 28th. Those wanting to see, and perhaps buy early, should attend a special Collectors Preview Night on January 26, with half of the ticket proceeds donated to Project Row Houses.

Photo courtesy of Houston Art Fair.

Artist Raul Rene Gonzalez at work.

The initial idea for creating a new kind of art fair began in 2023 as Reeves Art + Design received plenty of positive feedback after organizing shows with an objective to “revitalize and recharge art community in Houston,” Hannah Rees, gallery director, describes.

Gallery owner Matt Reeves explains that after hearing from many artists about working together, they knew that traditional, solo shows would not be enough.

“We wanted to create a grassroots, accessible environment to share all of this work with our audience in a way that celebrates everything Houston has to offer,” Reeves tells CultureMap.

Rees says after the call went out for artists they received around 150 applicants to show at this inaugural Houston Art Fair. They were at first, she recalls, somewhat surprised, but very excited, about how fast the word on the fair spread — not just among Houston and Texas artists, but even in international art communities.

Even with so many “fantastic applicants,” they had to curate and narrow down to 40 selected artists in order to fit everyone within the gallery space and give them a large enough wall section to adequately represent some of their best work.

Drawing up a Houston showcase

The majority of the artists showcased in the Houston Arts Fair will be Houston-based, such as artist and sculptor Angel Oloshove, portraitist Margo Lunsford, fiber artist Demi Kahn, ceramic artist Gözde Kaya Hepislebut, and painter Nana Sampong, just to name a few.

A number of Dallas artists (Kev Madden, Tyler Casey) and Austin artists (Richard Ashby, Tina Ruyi), as well a few international participants — including artists from Spain and Canada — will participate.

Keeping with a goal of celebrating the Houston arts community and beyond during the fair, Rees says they knew they wanted to also partner with a Houston arts organization. They reached out to the Third Ward-rooted Project Row Houses, which has such an historic record of community-based art projects.

Along with half those Preview Night ticket sales going to Project Row Houses, three Project Row Houses artists— Rabea Ballin, Brian Ellison, and Anthony Suber — will be given prominent places within the fair to display their work.

A collection for collectors

The size of this first Houston Arts Fair will give collectors and viewers much too see without being overwhelming. The intimate scale of the show also will likely prove to be a welcoming factor to Houston experienced collectors and novice art buyers, alike.

Instead of large booths and cavernous spaces of some previous art collecting fairs, each artist receives a section of gallery wall space and given the freedom to arrange the pieces themselves.

Many of the artists will also attend that Collectors Night to talk about their work and process one-on-one with collectors and answer any questions they might have.

In presenting these artists to Houston the goal was to make this new fair as accessible to wide range of arts lovers as possible, from experienced collectors and those contemporary art admirers who perhaps have never thought of acquiring and collecting. Though collecting art can become a live-long love and adventure, Rees says they recognize it can also be an expensive endeavor.

They see the Houston Art Fair as becoming a kind of bridge between the artists and both seasoned collectors and those who want to know more about collecting. With this in mind, Rees says they intentionally organized around the idea of “having a wide range of prices, subject matter and mediums to encourage everyone to access these art spaces.”

One of the core concepts of the Fair is accessibility — not just for artists — so Rees says they want to cater to collectors of all price points, which leads back to that initial inspiration for founding the fair:

“We wanted to figure out a way to share these amazing artists with our audience in a fun, large-scale manner and celebrate Houston for the art hub that it is.”

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The Houston Art Fair will run Friday, January 26 through Sunday, January 28 at Reeves Art + Design (2415 Taft St.). For a full schedule and more information, visit Reeves Art + Design online.

A Roman Holiday (Season)

All roads lead to Houston museum's blockbuster exhibit of Imperial Rome

Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

Houston's holiday season will have a distinctly Roman feeling this year, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is bringing the glory of the Gladiator era to Texas. On November 2, 2025 through January 25, 2026 the MFAH presents the monumental new exhibition “Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times.”

Featuring 160 objects of antiquity, including marble sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, delicate glass vessels, and exquisite bronze artifacts, the exhibition will transport visitors back in time to the Roman Empire during a flowering of art and architecture. The MFAH partnered with the Saint Louis Art Museum to organize the exhibition, which will showcase many pieces that have never been on view in the U.S.

While Emperor Trajan might not be the most famous — or in some cases, most infamous — of the Roman emperors, he ruled between 98 and 117 C.E. during the empire’s height and was the second of the so-called “Five Good Emperors” of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. He was also the first emperor born outside of present-day Italy, in what is now Andalusia, Spain. During his reign, he granted citizenship and rights to some peoples from conquered lands. The exhibition will explore how this time period expanded what it meant to be a Roman and how art reflected Rome’s power and promoted the empire’s values and ideals.

$\u200bThe Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times"$

Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

From statues of prominent men and women of the era, including Trajan, to vivid frescoes and furnishing from the villas of Pompeii, the objects in the exhibition will tell fascinating cultural and political stories of life in imperial Rome. To add context to the artworks and objects of antiquity, the MFAH will recreate a section of Trajan’s Column, which was a towering pillar with a spiraling narrative frieze, one of the few monumental sculptures to have survived the fall of Rome.

“Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times” brings such a wealth of objects to Houston thanks to unprecedented loans from the renowned antiquities collections of Italian museums including Museo Nazionale Romano, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, the Parco Archeologico di Ostia, and the Musei Vaticani. It would would likely take months of travel across Italy to see this much art.

“This is truly a rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to experience spectacular objects from this glorious era of the Roman Empire,” said Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH, in a statement. “We are enormously grateful to our colleagues in Rome, Naples, and Vatican City for lending these treasures to us and broadening the appreciation of Italy’s cultural heritage.”